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Triggerflow: Regression Testing by Advanced Execution Path Inspection

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Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 11543))

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Abstract

Cryptographic libraries often feature multiple implementations of primitives to meet both the security needs of handling private information and the performance requirements of modern services when the handled information is public. OpenSSL, the de-facto standard free and open source cryptographic library, includes mechanisms to differentiate the confidential data and its control flow, including run-time flags, designed for hardening against timing side-channels, but repeatedly accidentally mishandled in the past. To analyze and prevent these accidents, we introduce Triggerflow, a tool for tracking execution paths that, assisted by source annotations, dynamically analyzes the binary through the debugger. We validate this approach with case studies demonstrating how adopting our method in the development pipeline would have promptly detected such accidents. We further show-case the value of the tooling by presenting two novel discoveries facilitated by Triggerflow: one leak and one defect.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://gitlab.com/nisec/triggerflow.

  2. 2.

    https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/.

  3. 3.

    https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/.

  4. 4.

    https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/GDB_002fMI.html.

  5. 5.

    https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt.

  6. 6.

    https://gitlab.com/nisec/repatcher.

  7. 7.

    https://gitlab.com/nisec/openssl-triggerflow-ci.

  8. 8.

    https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/8254.

  9. 9.

    https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/8253.

  10. 10.

    https://golang.org/pkg/crypto/elliptic/.

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Acknowledgments

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 804476).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

    Iaroslav Gridin, Cesar Pereida García, Nicola Tuveri & Billy Bob Brumley

Authors
  1. Iaroslav Gridin
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  2. Cesar Pereida García
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  3. Nicola Tuveri
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  4. Billy Bob Brumley
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Iaroslav Gridin or Billy Bob Brumley .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Roberto Perdisci

  2. University of Rennes, CNRS, IRISA, Rennes, France

    Clémentine Maurice

  3. University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Giorgio Giacinto

  4. Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Magnus Almgren

A OpenSSL Commits

A OpenSSL Commits

  1. 1.

    fe2d3975880e6a89702f18ec58881307bf862542

  2. 2.

    a766aab93a282774e63ba918d0bb1c6680a5f292

  3. 3.

    46a643763de6d8e39ecf6f76fa79b4d04885aa59

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    0ebfcc8f92736c900bae4066040b67f6e5db8edb

  5. 5.

    621eaf49a289bfac26d4cbcdb7396e796784c534

  6. 6.

    b7d0f2834e139a20560d64c73e2565e93715ce2b

  7. 7.

    6364475a990449ef33fc270ac00472f7210220f2

  8. 8.

    a9cfb8c2aa7254a4aa6a1716909e3f8cb78049b6

  9. 9.

    00496b6423605391864fbbd1693f23631a1c5239

  10. 10.

    e913d11f444e0b46ec1ebbf3340813693f4d869d

  11. 11.

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  12. 12.

    54f007af94b8924a46786b34665223c127c19081

  13. 13.

    6939eab03a6e23d2bd2c3f5e34fe1d48e542e787

  14. 14.

    bd31fb21454609b125ade1ad569ebcc2a2b9b73c

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Gridin, I., Pereida García, C., Tuveri, N., Brumley, B.B. (2019). Triggerflow: Regression Testing by Advanced Execution Path Inspection. In: Perdisci, R., Maurice, C., Giacinto, G., Almgren, M. (eds) Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment. DIMVA 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11543. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22038-9_16

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